


i can think of something better

by faeded



Series: AFTG Bingo 2018 [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 04:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16509545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeded/pseuds/faeded
Summary: Allison doesn’t think she can pinpoint the moment when she fell for Renee.(Part of the AFTG Bingo 2018, squares: "Oops, we forgot", Friends to Lovers, Mismatching Socks)





	i can think of something better

**Author's Note:**

> did i basically write 3k of allison pining over renee? yeah, basically. i love them and i have been obsessing about aftg for months now, and i missed writing fics considering i haven't posted in years, and when i saw the bingo i thought 'why not'. this isn't betaed, so if anyone sees any errors, please feel free to tell me.
> 
> the title comes from sleepover by hayley kiyoko (because frankly any time i listen to hayley i suddenly want to write renison so i thought it was fitting)
> 
> (i'm pretty sure the rivalry was between dan and renee mainly, but i hadn't checked the books when i wrote that scene, so i think i implied neither of them got along at first and i only now realised of this. it's also my first time writing renison/these characters, so i mean, i like the practice, not gonna lie. also i'm pretty sure this is super light and there's no mentions of anything, but if i did mention something and haven't included it in the tags, please also feel free to tell me)

Allison doesn’t think she can pinpoint the moment when she fell for Renee.

She can think of plenty of interactions she has have with other girl, of course, but she’s not sure when her feelings shifted. She can remember nights spent with the two together in one bed, can think of painting each other’s nails, of Renee brushing her hair. She thinks of all the hours they’ve spent laying on the grass during the years when the weather is nice and they had free time, of the time Renee wanted to do a picnic and how Allison had made a production out of it. Of how she was there through her grief, of how she was there before that and how she stayed there after it, always there, always supportive.

She thinks that every time she is with Renee, all her mind is filled with is a sense of calm and the thought of white hair with rainbow ends. She’s peace and she’s protection, and she remembers her saying ‘Give her back to me’ when Minyard had nearly broken her neck for slapping Aaron when he dared to use Seth’s death as a weapon (God, they had hated him. Seth had been awful in his own way as well, she knew, but they had _hated_ him. They had never given him _any_ kind of chance, neither Aaron nor any of his _family_ had ever bothered to see nothing but the worst parts of him, and now the asshole thought he had _any_ right to mention his death?). All she had heard had been the rush of blood in her ears, that and Renee’s voice cutting through it all. And all she had been able to concentrate afterwards had been Renee’s comforting arms around her while she buried her face in her neck.

She has a thousand different memories of Renee Walker, but she can’t point to when she saw her and thought ‘ _best friend_ ’ to when that changed to ‘ _I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to hold your hand and kiss you and help you with every charity you want to do, and spend my entire life watching you_ ’. From ‘best friend’ to ‘You’re the one I want, you, _you_.’ So she’s not quite certain of how to deal with the fact that she’s most certainly in love with her best friend and it’s taking everything in her to keep acting as usual. Luckily, Allison happens to be a pretty good actress, so it’s not as if she’s failing at it, it’s just that lately, she doesn’t want to keep doing it. Lately, she cannot help but wonder what would happen if she confessed her feelings to Renee.

It’s the fear of losing her completely which stops her, she knows. She has known she liked girls since she was eighteen and hooked up with a girl in a party when she and Seth had been ‘off’, so it’s not actually a complete surprise. She’s bisexual, she’s known that for a few years by now, even if she has only kissed a few girls and she’s only dated boys so far (or Seth, really, during most of her college experience. They had started their relationship back when she was still a freshman and it had only ended with his death). On the other hand, she doesn’t know Renee’s sexuality, which looking back to it might seem a bit strange to her, but on the other hand, she would never presume of pressuring Renee to tell her anything she wasn't comfortable with. Everyone else? They were fair game. But not Renee.

(Maybe she should have figured out before her feelings towards her, Allison thinks with a grimace. The mere fact that she refused to even think of making any type of bet on her because she wanted to respect her privacy? That should have sent off any and every alarm in her mind)

When she thinks about it, Renee barely mentions guys, and even when she has, it has been in the way she talks about everyone, but she hasn’t mentioned girls either. She’s probably overthinking it, Allison thinks, but she can’t help but fear being rejected. What if Renee didn’t like girls? Or what if she did, but didn’t like Allison as nothing but a friend? What if Allison opened her mouth and ruined their friendship? It’s not as if she thinks she couldn’t live without Renee, but she also doesn’t want to. She likes Renee, she enjoys talking to her every day, so… Well. She really doesn’t want to do anything that could end with them not having any relationship, be that romantic or a friendship. Renee probably wouldn’t end their friendship even if she rejected her, she thinks, but she is not fond of the possibility either, no matter how unlikely it seems when she thinks more codly about it.

It is particularly annoying, she thinks, because normally she’s the one who can play people who like her. She's never had any problem in realising whether people liked her or not. Or at least that's what used to happen, and it’s particularly annoying not to be able to play someone however she wants. It’s probably because she doesn’t want to mess with Renee’s mind. She doesn’t want to manipulate her. She wants to hold her hand and kiss her and it’s… Ugh.

She’s overwhelmed enough with the whole situation that she groans slightly and shoves her head into her pillow, frustrated with the entire universe. Maybe she should go shopping tomorrow morning to deal with it, she thinks, as she rearranges herself in her bed. A second later, she hears a soft voice speak, and she thinks that maybe it’s her fault for thinking so much about her. “Allison? Are you okay?”

Kind, forever concerned about everyone Renee, she thinks. Alright, maybe it’s just because she groaned in frustration that Renee asked, considering they share a room, but still. She feels as though it’s because she’s been thinking too loudly.

“Yeah,” she says after a second passes, rising her head enough so her voice is clear and keeping it casual. Not as if she has been wondering whether to confess her love to her. Not at all like that was what was going through her mind, no. “Totally. Just got myself comfortable for my beauty sleep. Not as though I need it.”

She hears a soft snort coming from Renee’s bed, and for a second all she wants to hear is her laugh. “Goodnight, Allison,” Renee says softly, and Allison returns a “Night” before turning around and shoving her face in her pillow once more to force herself to fall asleep. Shopping, definitely, she decides. She needs to deal with this somehow, so it’ll simply have to be shopping.

*****

She keeps telling herself she will tell Renee about her feelings, and then reconsidering and losing her nerve every time she goes to open her mouth, which is incredibly annoying for Allison, who has never faltered in her entire life.

She has looked at any and every challenge in the eyes and charged directly, and yet she cannot outright tell her best friend she happens to have feelings for her.

She keeps throwing indirect comments at her, only to have Renee look at her and smile softly at her and ignore them completely (“Do you want to be my date to the Banquet?” “Of course, we can go as friends, it doesn’t bother me.” or how she asked about Moreau once and she only got as a response, “Yes, we still talk, he’s getting used to the Trojans, I believe.” but it didn’t quite answer her question as to whether something had happened to them after Renee had gone to get him from the Nest or if it had been a simple matter of Renee helping him simply because she saw someone worth saving, and remaining friends. And it’s not like any other comment trying to discover whether she liked girls or not gave her any better results, truly), enough times that Allison realises that it will not work unless she is ready to say it to her face.

*****

It comes to a head a couple of months after she has been thinking of it. A couple of months where Allison told herself she would tell Renee her feelings and then deal with it because she felt she would lose her mind if she didn’t do it, and then didn’t follow through. A couple of months that seemed to drag on for Allison as he tried to ignore, then get over her feelings, and failed at both.

There’s really nothing particularly special about the night. Dan is not in the dorm, instead spending time with Matt before the Foxes movie night starts in half an hour, probably wanting to spend time alone with him even if there’s still more than a few months before graduation, and some more before the year they’d spend apart between Dan’s graduation and Matt’s the next year. But then, there’s the fact that Matt intends to go pro, at leas for a few years, and Dan wants to become a coach. She knows Matt intends of signing with one that’s based as close as possible as Dan’s team when she finds a job later this year, but then there’s the fact that it truly depends on which teams will offer him a position, and all he can really do is choose between those. Not to take into account all of the away games which will probably reduce the weekends he can go and visit Dan. Allison isn’t sure how they plan on organising their routines to coincide in the next couple of years.

The thought of couples (And, alright, yes— The whole topic of being in love) makes her eyes wander towards Renee. Renee, who is curled into herself, a blanket thrown on her, but high enough that she can see her mismatched socks. She’s even knitting another pair at the moment.

(Allison still remembers when she first noticed Renee’s habit, back in their first year and back when neither of them really got along with each other, or with Dan. Allison had gotten along slightly better with Renee than Dan did, at least, but that wasn’t difficult because Dan and Renee carried a strong rivalry from high school, it seemed, and it had taken them months to work through their past issues. Allison hadn’t gotten along with either of them that well either, even if Renee was nice to her most of the time, but Allison’s attitude during the first months had gotten even to her, and she had seen her grind her teeth and look like she was probably praying for patience more than once. It most likely hadn’t had helped having her own rivalry with Dan right there, and Allison testing her patience when she had been trying as hard as she had to be a good person, but back then she still wasn’t sure she liked them, and it had taken her a few months to start feeling comfortable completely with them. She likes to think it would have happened regardless, because she can’t quite imagine not being friends with Dan and Renee, not having them in her life, but she also knows that their friendship had also been boosted by having to stand together.

The first time she had seen Renee wearing mismatched socks, she had looked at her and said, her tone borderline disdainful, “You do realise they do not match, right?”, only for Renee to look at her, breath before she spoke and answer, “Yes, thank you, I have eyes, but it’s very considerate of you to worry.”

During their second year, a year between that conversation and then, all three of them had realised that between pretending to get along to defend themselves and their ability to play Exy even being women, rooming together and spending all of those hours together at Court, they had come to actually consider each other friends, even if neither of them had realised of that until they found themselves missing the others. After that happened, they had started sharing their pasts with each other, and Allison can still recall when Renee had spoken of how Stephanie liked knitting, and she always wore mismatched socks inside of her house because she always lost one, and how she had started knitting them that way herself. She stills remembers the emotion in Renee’s face when she told them the time Stephanie had gifted her pairs of socks one time she had done well at the end of school, how it had been one of the little things that had piled up and made her feel at home and like she had a family where she belonged. Or how that feeling had only intensified when Renee and Stephanie took to knit together, her mother teaching her how to do it.)

It’s the most common scene in the world. She has seen Renee do this at least a hundred times before, sat in silence with her comfortable in a way she’s not with anyone else. Everyone always spends their time describing Allison like a storm, like a natural disaster, and they are not wrong, but she also needs these moments of peace. Every time she’s with Renee, it’s like there’s this sense of calm that settles her, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

“I like you,” she suddenly hears herself blurting out, and it’s actually so unlike her that it’s remarkable, really.

Thinking of it, it’s anticlimactic at best. She’s standing there on her pyjamas because she had been planning on changing now after taking a shower, and they have to see the rest of the Foxes in, what, twenty five minutes now? And here she is, suddenly deciding to blurt out her feelings to Renee. Renee, who has gone completely still now, before she turns her gaze on her and stares at her for twenty seconds where Allison can barely hear anything other than her heartbeat.

“I love you,” she continues, suddenly unable to stand the silence. Before, the clicking of Renee’s knitting needles had filled the room, and now there’s nothing but her voice filling the space between them. Which is incredibly annoying, when Allison wants nothing more than to cross said space and bring Renee’s face towards her and kiss her senseless. Or not. She can do kissing softly, too, for her, she thinks. She has never done it for anyone else in the past, but she thinks she can do it with Renee without problem. In fact, she could do any type of kissing with Renee, anything and as much as she wanted to do and only that, and she would think of herself as the luckiest girl on Earth. “For a long time, and I was thinking whether I should say anything, because we’re friends, but I just wanted you to know that, so—”

Her talking is suddenly stopped when Renee stands, and she hadn’t noticed until then how unnaturally still she had gone, and she might be reading too much into it, except—

Renee is suddenly in front of her, her hands clasping gently around her wrists to tug her closer to her, and there’s something that she thinks might be awe in her face, and the mere possibility that she put that expression in her face makes her feel almost giddy, almost dizzy. Seconds ago, she was worrying over having ruined their friendship by opening her mouth, worrying that she should have taken a hint when after all these months Renee kept ignoring anything resembling to an advance, and now here she is, mere inches away from Renee. Even if she still was attempting to ignore her feelings, she knows she couldn’t do it now.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for years,” Renee says, and Allison has to fight down the surprise, even though she’s sure some of it remains obvious on her face.

“I though—,” Allison falters for a moment, before she continues, her voice still softer than it’d be in any other situation, “I didn’t know if you liked girls, and you never showed any reaction—” Not when she made comments, not when she walked around half naked in their room, Renee’s eyes hadn’t even lingered for a mere second, she had instead continued instead treating her as she did everyone else. “You’re nice to everyone,” she concludes at last.

Renee smiles. “I didn’t want to push, and I thought I might have been imagining things because… Well, because of what I wanted. You’re bold with everyone, Allison.”

For a moment, Allison isn’t sure whether this is better or worse, how she had spent months worrying and wandering, when apparently Renee had liked her for years now. When they would have been able to have this conversation months ago, had she decided to be brave enough to accept her feelings and tell them to Renee before.

A second later, she decides it doesn’t matter. They are close enough that she can count all of Renee’s lashes if she wanted, and all that really matters is that _Renee likes her back_. Renee likes her back and apparently wants to kiss her, nothing else is of importance right now except that. She could have done this months ago, yes, but she did it now, so there’s little point in dwelling in that when she has Renee right in front of her.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Allison says, the conviction returning to her voice finally, because Renee had said she was bold, hadn’t she?

She still waits to see if Renee pulls back or if there’s any regret appearing in her demeanour, though, but when a few seconds pass and all she does is stare at her with a slight smile in her face, the happiness clearly visible, Allison leans down to bring their lips together.

*****

They do end up making out for more than twenty or however-many minutes they had until the movie night started, but Allison barely notices the pass of time, even though they do little more than kiss and hold each other, her fingers twisting into Renee’s shorter hair, and Renee’s at her waist or her back.

Both of them keep smiling every once in a while, and at one point (Or, well, a few, really), Allison has to separate herself because she cannot seem to stop smiling enough to return to kissing properly. Which is really rude, she thinks, because she has thought of kissing her for months now and she wants to go back to that.

(“We are together now, right?” she questions at one of those moments when they break apart, and she sees Renee smile at her once again. It’s strange, how often she has seen Renee smile, considering that’s what she does with everyone, all of the time, and not get bored of it in the slightest. On the contrary, she thinks she could spend hours looking at Renee smile and still want to look some more.

“Yes,” Renee answers, voice still soft. “Yes, we’re together, if you want. I would like that.”

“Well, then, we’re together,” Allison declares, bringing her face close to Renee’s once more. “Because I’d like that as well, so we should be together.”)

It goes on until there’s a few knocks on their door, that are firm enough that they can be heard in their bedroom. Allison separates herself from Renee to look at the door, think whether it can be anyone that she wants to deal with more than she wants to be with Renee at the moment and decides to ignore it when she realises that no, the answer is no. Unfortunately, Renee does actually separate from her when she hears a second knock, muttering, “I’m going to see who it is. It might be important.”, and Allison goes to follow her.

At least until a couple of seconds later she hears the door opening, and Dan’s voice carry though the dorm. Oh, right, the movie night she had organised so they could ‘spend time as a group, you know we need it more than ever with the way the team is right now, Allison.’

“Allison! Renee! Are you here?” She hears Dan say, and when Renee opens the door they find themselves in front of Dan, who apparently had had the idea of looking for them there. Although, really, it they were in the dorm and she had already found the other room empty, the bedroom was the only other area that they could have been in. “We were watching movies tonight, as a team, remember? Even Neil and _Andrew_ showed up.”

She says it like it’s important, which, to be fair, it probably is. Neil doesn’t enjoy movies, and everyone knows that even now the monster prefers not to socialise too much with them.

“Oops,” Allison says from behind Renee, not looking apologetic or like she regrets it at all. “We forgot.”

“Right—” Dan looks between them, probably searching for what had happened, while Renee simply stares at her with that innocent expression of hers in her face but doesn’t move at all. “Well, then we can go—”

“Can’t.” Allison picks up a lock of her hair, then stares at her nails for a moment, before starting to push Dan towards the door slowly and as much in a subtle way as she can, which isn’t saying much when she thinks about it. Her lips might be kiss swollen, she considers now, because Renee’s definitively are, but there’s not much that can be done now. Dan will most likely connect the dots in a few moments anyway, and she wants her to be out of the dorm by the time she does. “We’re busy. Tell us how it went later, and if anything interesting happened. I still have a few bets going. Bye!”

She closes the door as soon as she has Dan out of the room, waves her hand at her for a second before turning, only to find Renee a feet away or so, who says, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

Allison lets out a short laugh, nods, and then can’t help but laugh again when she is kissed a moment later.


End file.
